What the Audacity of Hope Looks Like From Behind Bars

By

Gary Fields

Updated Jan. 21, 2009 12:01 a.m. ET

ANGOLA, La. -- The horses were grazing, and the rifles were stored in their armory racks. The inmates who normally tend crops weren't working, so the officers who watch over them in the fields didn't need horses or guns.

Change, at least for a day, had come to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, the state's maximum-security prison. On Tuesday, Warden Burl Cain gave the inmates the day off to watch Barack Obama take the oath of office. It was the first time in the prison's history that inmates were free to watch a president being sworn in.

"Most of the guys here face the reality that a president can't change things overnight," says Jerry Ward, 43 years old and 19 years into a life sentence for second-degree murder, convicted of shooting a man during a domestic dispute. At the same time, he says, "life here is what you make it and there are rewards for acting like men should, even here."

Normally, most of the 5,100 men here would be somewhere on the prison's vast farm, perhaps toiling in the broccoli or turnip fields. Angola, a prison for more than 120 years, sits on 18,000 acres wedged between the Mississippi River and the pine-covered Tunica Hills.

Tuesday, nearly all of the inmates stood glued to televisions scattered throughout the facility. About 250 of them squeezed into Angola's main activity room broke into applause and a standing ovation as Mr. Obama became the nation's 44th president.

More than half the men in this prison, once known as one of the most dangerous in America, are here for killing someone. Seventy percent have life sentences and the average sentence for the remainder is more than 80 years. With few paroles or pardons, almost all the prisoners will die here.

That makes President Obama's promise of "change" and "hope" less realistic for the residents of Angola. Long sentences also complicate Mr. Cain's job as warden. How do you entice a man to behave when he has no compelling reason to do so? For most, the threat of a negative recommendation to the parole or pardon boards is empty.

ENLARGE

Burl Cain

Ronnie Moran, 50, serving a life sentence for rape, says he appreciated being able to watch the inauguration, but doesn't believe Mr. Obama's election will change anything. "Until we decide to put down the guns and the drugs and stop the violence, it doesn't matter that we have an African-American president," he says. "You can have all the Barack Obamas in the world."

Warden Cain nonetheless seized on the election of an African-American as president as a teachable moment for inmates. Because the prison he oversees is three-quarters black, Mr. Cain reasons, Mr. Obama's inauguration is especially potent.

Mr. Cain says he tries to use moments like this, historic inaugurations and the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, as well as privileges for good behavior, to treat inmates like humans. "I tell them I can be as nice as you let me or as mean as you make me," he says.

Inmates greet the 66-year-old man, with his white hair and Southern drawl, as an old friend as he walks through the main prison. He has argued for years with state officials that more inmates should get parole.

Inmates began lining up three hours before the swearing in. The all-purpose activity room is in the prison's main camp, which houses 2,500 people. The atmosphere was almost festive, with inmates ordering food from the canteen and filling up the room, taking the front seats first.

Raymond Flank, 46 years old, convicted of second-degree murder in a robbery in New Orleans, says he felt like he was being allowed to participate in the inauguration in some small way. "Not only do we get the day off, but we get to see an example of who we can be and what we can accomplish if we try," he says.

Mr. Flank, who is African-American, says he expects to see the results here in Camp J, the disciplinary unit where men who rebel against the system are placed with few privileges. "For years, they've had no image to look up to, but now they have the image of Barack Obama," he says.

"This is my first inauguration speech, ever," says Jim Young, a 69-year-old white inmate from Sand Point, Idaho. Mr. Young has been here since 1983 after stabbing a man to death in a barroom fight that, he says, "went too far." He helps train boxers in the inmate program and hopes that seeing the inauguration opens the eyes of some of the younger inmates.

Imprisoned the past 26 years, Jeffrey Lewis, 48, was convicted on two counts of manslaughter and is serving a total of 80 years. He says Mr. Obama's election and swearing in let him think "anything is possible."

He says he will recommit to his work with the hospice where inmates who are terminally ill spend their last days. He also intends to get other inmates to reconnect with their families. "The key is to work and stay useful," says Mr. Lewis.

Douglas Dennis, his arms scarred and his left eye blinded from long-ago knife fights with other inmates, didn't come to the activity room. He watched from the offices of the Angolite, the prison magazine produced by inmates.

Mr. Dennis, 73, has been here since June 1957, except for a period when he was a fugitive. A drifter, born in Chicago, he was hitchhiking through Shreveport, La., when he was picked up by a patrol car. Mr. Dennis, who is white, got into a fight at the jail, killing his cellmate. He was sentenced to life and sent to Angola, where he killed another inmate. He got his second life sentence.

Mr. Dennis has little hope Mr. Obama will tackle the problems of the criminal-justice system. "He's got his hands full: Two wars, the economy is going in the tank and the health-care costs are skyrocketing," says Mr. Dennis. "I'd be surprised if he has time to brush his teeth in the next four years."

Warden Cain says Mr. Obama's election makes him optimistic. "My daddy had a phrase: 'We've got to grab a root and growl,'" he says, meaning, it is time for work. He says Mr. Obama shows his inmates that the country is full of possibilities, even in a prison. "If the men here can have hope, then why can't the rest of the country?"

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